Are you looking for a way to fuel your digital transformation (DX) journey?
Everything starts with the support of the right provider.
Avaya and Cisco are two pioneers competing in the UC industry, and both have seen significant recognition for their innovation and achievements in space. While Avaya and Cisco offer similar solutions for things like the Unified Communication Collaboration and the Contact Center services, each provider has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Introducing Avaya and Cisco
Both Cisco and Avaya are widely recognized as leaders in the industry in the unified communications and network environment. Cisco, for example, has earned a name as one of the most technologically advanced and reliable enterprise solution providers for large companies. By investing in ongoing research and development and participating in strategic acquisitions with other leading companies, Cisco has earned its place as a market leader at UC.Avaya is another name that appears frequently in a discussion related to unified communication services. As one of the best-known VoIP services on the market, Avaya has experience in both the UC space and the Contact Center. Recently, they have improved their focus on software and the cloud industry, to ensure they have the potential to provide companies that digitally transform future-proof solutions for communications.
Both Cisco and Avaya are known for their comprehensive UC solutions that include data, voice, video and team collaboration solutions. So, how do you choose the right provider for your business needs?
Financials
As of Q2 Financial Year 2018, Avaya has:
A total revenue of $672 million
An adjusted EBITDA of $187 million
Non-GAAP revenue of $757 million
For Q2 of Financial Year 2018, Cisco has
Revenue of $11.9 billion
Non-GAAP net income of $3.1 billion
Both companies are publicly traded.
Gartner says:
Avaya has been a "leader" in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for nine years. Despite the company's problems with Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017, Avaya managed to stay in its first place, thanks to its diverse and highly versatile selection of CU products. In the Gartner Magic Quadrant report, the analytics company praises Avaya for its consumption-based licensing models and managed service offerings for UCaaS and CCaaS. Gartner says these solutions make it easier for customers to outsource their infrastructure services and applications to Avaya and its partners.Cisco is also a leader in the Magic Quadrant. Gartner praises the company for its innovative portfolio, which includes premise-based endpoints, flexible hybrid solutions and cloud services. According to Gartner, "Cisco's flexible hybrid solutions allow customers with facility-based solutions to integrate with the Cisco WebEx cloud for calls, meetings, and team collaboration."
Glassdoor Says:
The latest employee numbers for Avaya rank at around 8,700 staff members around the world. On the other hand, Cisco has an astronomically large company in comparison, with over 72,790 employees across the globe. Independent employment platform Glassdoor rates each company the following out of 5 for employee satisfaction:
Avaya: 3.2
Cisco 4.2
Avaya vs Cisco: Unified Communications
It is difficult to overlook the importance of unified communications, as companies constantly seek more efficient and cost-effective solutions for diverse connectivity. Organizations are looking for a way to link the aspects of their communication strategy into a single, easy-to-use platform, and both Avaya and Cisco can help with this:
Cisco Unified Communications Manager
For enterprise-level communication and collaboration services, Cisco offers Cisco Unified Communications Manager. With the intention of bringing people together in the business space at any time, regardless of the device, this service offers simple, scalable and secure call control and session management. With Cisco Communications Manager, you can consolidate your communications network and simplify calls with IP telephony, high definition video, instant messaging, unified messaging and presence features.
Avaya IP Office & Aura
Avaya IP Office (for small and medium enterprises) and Avaya Aura (for large companies) offer solutions designed to transform the average business environment into a more productive and streamlined location. With IP Office and Aura, companies can transform their interactions with customers and colleagues through a perfect platform for management and commitment. The IP Office system expands to 3,000 users and offers WebRTC applications for click connectivity to call from Microsoft Office, Salesforce and more. Avaya Aura scales hundreds of thousands of users.
Avaya vs Cisco: Collaboration
Collaboration is another area that sees a greater focus on the modern business environment. Companies know that if they want their dispersed professional communities to work together without problems, they need a platform to share information and projects safely and effectively. Cisco and Avaya offer their own alternatives to the complexity of email and phone call collaboration strategies of the past:
Cisco Spark:
An application-centric, cloud-based solution that provides full collaboration services for teams that want to send messages, create, call or connect with their coworkers, Cisco Spark has it all. Whether you want to participate on a whiteboard, work together on projects or just catch up, Cisco Spark offers a simple and effective workflow solution during, before and after meetings. It is designed to help professional teams work seamlessly together, with the functions of Meetings, Messaging and Calls.
Avaya Equinox:
On the other side of the coin, we have Avaya Equinox, the system that helps companies to train their workers by reducing the limitations of the natural collaboration environment. With Equinox, employees both in the office and on the move can connect with each other through their own team rooms. There is the option of audio conferencing, video conferencing, instant messaging and file sharing so that workers can tackle a project at the same time.
Avaya vs Cisco: Contact Center
Finally, many UC companies are beginning to explore the benefits of adding contact center features to the combination in the current market. Today's brands are beginning to realize that they need an effective strategy for customer satisfaction if they want to differentiate themselves from other firms. With that in mind, Cisco and Avaya offer contact center solutions designed to deliver an exceptional user experience and also a customer experience (CX).
Cisco Contact Center options
For agile contact centers that want to be able to quickly scale and scale based on call demand and customer needs, Cisco offers a range of software platforms for the contact center environment. These solutions come with flexible scalability, fast provisioning and minimal support costs so that organizations have everything they need to keep their customers happy. There is support for thousands of agents per platform instance, as well as intelligent contact routing, support for multichannel campaigns and more. Users can also access the next-generation agent and supervisor desktops with the Cisco Finesse feature.
Avaya Aura Contact Center
Alternatively, Avaya Aura Contact Center is designed to make managing the customer experience easier than ever with a simple user interface. Sales representatives can use Aura to manage a wide variety of customer interactions across multiple channels, including instant messaging, email, chat, SMS and more. The complete omnichannel experience offered by Aura gives brands a new way to differentiate themselves in the contact center space. Performance management is also available and a reporting module with up to 120 real-time or historical reports to choose from. More recently, Avaya has demonstrated its market leadership by acquiring a new contact center company in the cloud called Spoken Communications and has also demonstrated how blockchain technology can be integrated with its platform.
Choose the correct unified communications solution
While there are many areas in which Avaya and Cisco UC services can overlap, it is safe to say that both have their own exclusive services and benefits to offer. For most companies in today's business world, it is important to consider your options carefully before taking advantage of the perfect UC solution for your brand. Ultimately, your decision between Avaya and Cisco will depend on your personal preferences and what you look for in a communication infrastructure.
